The colour of gender stereotyping

Despite legislative attempts to eliminate gender stereotyping from society, the propensity to evaluate people on the basis of their sex remains a pernicious social problem. Noting the critical interplay between cultural and cognitive factors in the establishment of stereotypical beliefs, the current investigation explored the extent to which culturally transmitted colour-gender associations (i.e., pink is for girls, blue is for boys) set the stage for the automatic activation and expression of gender stereotypes. Across six experiments, the results demonstrated that (1) consumer choice for children's goods is dominated by gender-stereotyped colours (Experiment 1); (2) colour-based stereotypic associations guide young children's behaviour (Experiment 2); (3) colour-gender associations automatically activate associated stereotypes in adulthood (Experiments 3-5); and (4) colour-based stereotypic associations bias impressions of male and female targets (Experiment 6). These findings indicate that, despite prohibitions against stereotyping, seemingly innocuous societal practices may continue to promote this mode of thought.     

From Social Construction to Relational Construction: Practices from the Edge

In this paper, I talk about Ken Gergen??s influence in the communication discipline. Beginning with his ground-breaking publications in the 1970??s (Gergen 1973, 1978), we see him challenging the taken for granted separation of theory and practice, scholar and practitioner. One of Ken??s many contributions?Cregardless of disciplinary domain?Chas been the nurturing of forms of practice being developed by creative and innovative practitioners and young scholars alike. There are several key resources that are woven throughout Ken??s work that have continued to inspire and influence practitioners working in mental health, healthcare, organizations, schools, communities, and peace building endeavors. The most central of these resources include (1) centering relational processes which, in turn, generate the expansion of (2) collaborative, participatory practices that embrace alternative worldviews through a (3) a reflexive stance. Ken has challenged himself and all of us to stay on the edge because it is on the edge that new relational possibilities can be created. He has invited us to embrace the edge as the place of great comfort; comfort in knowing that there will always be possibilities for forging new ways of making meaning together.     

Differentiating Adolescent Self-Injury from Adolescent Depression: Possible Implications for Borderline Personality Development

Self-inflicted injury (SII) in adolescence marks heightened risk for suicide attempts, completed suicide, and adult psychopathology. Although several studies have revealed elevated rates of depression among adolescents who self injure, no one has compared adolescent self injury with adolescent depression on biological, self-, and informant-report markers of vulnerability and risk. Such a comparison may have important implications for treatment, prevention, and developmental models of self injury and borderline personality disorder. We used a multi-method, multi-informant approach to examine how adolescent SII differs from adolescent depression. Self-injuring, depressed, and typical adolescent females (n = 25 per group) and their mothers completed measures of psychopathology and emotion regulation, among others. In addition, we assessed electrodermal responding (EDR), a peripheral biomarker of trait impulsivity. Participants in the SII group (a) scored higher than depressed adolescents on measures of both externalizing psychopathology and emotion dysregulation, and (b) exhibited attenuated EDR, similar to patterns observed among impulsive, externalizing males. Self-injuring adolescents also scored higher on measures of borderline pathology. These findings reveal a coherent pattern of differences between self-injuring and depressed adolescent girls, consistent with theories that SII differs from depression in etiology and developmental course.     

Caller characteristics, call contents, and types of assistance provided by caller sex and age group in a Canadian Inuit crisis line in Nunavut, 1991-2001

Analysis of calls made to a northern Canadian Inuit crisis line in the territory of Nunavut between 1991 and 2001 revealed that the majority of users were adult females who called to discuss problems primarily related to relationships and loneliness/boredom. Younger callers tended to make prank calls. The volunteer staff used mostly empathetic listening and suggestions. Referral recommendations made were primarily to social services. Although some callers experienced a language barrier, others found the service to be helpful. Results suggest that the crisis line was underused by young Inuit males who represent a group that are most in need of crisis intervention.     

Aging, imagery, and the bizarreness effect

ABSTRACT This study examined the bizarre imagery effect in young and older adults, under incidental and intentional conditions. Intentionality was manipulated across experiments, with participants receiving an incidental free recall test in Experiment 1 and an intentional test in Experiment 2. This study also examined the relation between working memory resources and the bizarreness effect. In Experiment 1 young and older adults were presented with common and bizarre sentences; they later received an incidental recall test. There were no age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect in Experiment 1 when ANOVAs were used to analyze the data. However, when the bizarreness effect was examined in terms of effect size, there was evidence that younger adults produced larger bizarreness effect sizes than younger adults. Experiment 2 further explored age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect by presenting young and older adults with bizarre and common sentences under intentional learning conditions. Experiment 2 failed to yield age differences as a function of item type (bizarre vs. common). In addition, Experiment 2 failed to yield significant evidence that the bizarreness effect is modulated by working memory resources. The results of this study are most consistent with the distinctiveness account of the bizarreness effect.     

Syntax in pictures

It was hypothesised that pictures drawn to represent active and passive sentences would reflect this syntactic difference. Specifically, it was predicted that the reversal of the order in which the logical subject (LS) and the logical object (LO) occur in the change from active to passive form of sentence will affect the order in which they occur in their pictorial representations. A significant directional preference was found for placing the LO to the left of the LS in the pictorial representations of passive but not active sentences. This was discussed in terms of the marked status of the passive in relation to the active. In the case of sentences differing only in lexical marking there was no asymmetric directionality effect corresponding to that found for actives and passives. A significant tendency to match the surface order of the sentences in the pictures was found for both lexically marked and unmarked sentences. The possibility that other spatial or physical dimensions might be used to express syntactic and semantic factors in the pictorial representation of sentences is considered.